Avatar: Chimp Mosh Pit Tour

As a strange light in the sky beckons you towards something forbidden, far away, you see a robed, horned ferryman, rowing across a restless sea at the end of days. Back home a strange sound rolls through your house. It comes from the basement. The news talks about a beautiful corpse, lauded for her magnificent demise on a dance floor by men who could have fixed her. You catch the last broadcast from an outpost succumbing to flames on a distant moon. Its inhabitants try to outrun their own madness. Outside there is a place you’re not allowed to go, no matter how intoxicating the gaze of the eyes among the trees. 

You lay awake at night, yet you dream thousand dreams more real than any waking moment. 

Strange times call for a strange band. With a life long commitment to the misfit arts, Avatar delves deep into the collective subconscious. They travel beyond the realms of flesh and far past the spiritual barriers broken in past works. No matter how many times they were warned, they keep treading deeper into the woods. There is sense to be made out of the senseless. They lay a soft gaze upon terrifying, almost shapeless inner landscapes, and 

they have a damn good time doing it. 

Don’t go in the forest is a warning said by others, heeded as a challenge for a certain kind of freak who just can’t fight the urge to seek truth and feel alive. It is a collection of strange tunes emerging from a circus tent in a meadow in a faraway valley. You can only ever get there by accident, walking a path impossible to remember and map out. Two eyes closed, one eye open. 

Formed by John Alfredsson and Jonas Jarlsby as teenagers, soon joined by Johannes Eckerström, Henrik Sandelin and Simon Andersson, Avatar started an evolution that would see a group always looking to connect what you hear with what you see. Once Andersson left and Tim Öhrström joined, they had all the ingredients to a brew so potent it would forge their names into the souls of millions. More than a band, Avatar has evolved to concept art. In order to keep going with the same drive as they had on day one, they make sure that what is made must be done. Every single time must matter more than ever before. No matter how far they get, they are sworn to remain underdogs. There is so much to do, to try. So many ways to rediscover the simple yet sublime power hidden inside an electric guitar. 

It’s all about trying new things, on and off stage. Choirs, brass instruments, Moogs, piano, cellos and violas. As long as it all worships at the altar of the riff, the possibilities are as vast as the universe. Don’t go in the forest once again stretches, bends and breaks the boundaries of what Avatar is and can be by providing both the most introspective as well as their most explosive moments. It is all done in a way that can only be achieved after a lifetime in servitude to the madness where all your gathered experiences are used to be reborn. In other words, by embracing discovery as the core tenet for what they do, every new release is as fresh and exciting as their very first time in a rehearsal room. 

While the studio experience is becoming a more and more powerful tool for self expression, it is on the stage where Avatar truly comes alive. Every testimonial makes the same claims in all caps. Avatar is a MUST SEE experience. Every album cycle has provided record breaking milestones. A few of the more recent ones being kicking the door in on Latin America, first with Iron Maiden, and then with sold out shows all throughout Mexico and beyond. They have also become the talk of countless festivals across Europe and the United States, being a surefire stage closer and show stealer everywhere they go, all while setting attendance record after attendance record for their headline shows. From Australia to Brazil. From Scandinavia to the Mediterranean Sea. From the Pacific Northwest to the Deep South. Everywhere they go, their unique blend of suggestive theatrics and unabashed, unapologetic good heavy metal times, they have proven that there is only one Avatar and everyone else is playing for second place. Their impact is shown with chart toppers such as “The Dirt I’m Buried In” reaching heights that are hard to imagine from a band that has stepped into the craziest era in music history, taking matters into their own hand with their own independent label, Black Waltz Records. 

For centuries the circus would come to town. Now, for the first time in history, the gravitational pull of Avatar is so strong that the town is coming to the circus. A circus deep in the forest. A forbidden place. A taboo you are destined to break.

ORBIT CULTURE is a band poised. The Swedish quartet’s Century Media debut, Death Above Life “, is not merely a statement of how far the band has come, but it is the sound of metal in the most modern sense. ”This record represents change, a new beginning,” says ORBIT CULTURE guitarist, vocalist and songwriter, Niklas Karlsson. “It brings up a lot of good and bad emotions but it’s a big change for the better. It feels like a rebirth.”

Already, ORBIT CULTURE has distinguished themselves with a steady stream of jaw-dropping albums including 2023’s Descent and its 2021 predecessor Nija. They’ve seized stages with the likes of Slipknot, Knocked Loose and Trivium, blown away festival crowds with their layered, melodic death metal scraping sound and won “Next Big Thing” status in a way even the most promising outfits can’t approach. Death Above Life lifts ORBIT CULTURE’s years of hard work with a sharpened songwriting edge and swaggering confidence. From the album’s scorching opener, “Inferna” to its clench-fisted title track to the elegiac closer, “The Path I Walk”, It’s clear: ORBIT CULTURE is at the top of their game.

Despite coming from a country rich in metal history, ORBIT CULTURE’s story is one of isolated teens in the rural town of Eksjö, Sweden, making music surrounded by dense, Scandinavian woods and winter gloom. “It’s dark and cold all the time and the only thing you have is snow and streetlights,” says Niklas. Inspired by a steady diet of Metallica, Gojia and Static-X, Karlsson found an outlet that would eventually become an obsession. “We were small-town kids from nowhere,” he says. “We were never part of a scene or anything, so we had to do it ourselves. We’re still very much of a ‘Do It Yourself’ kind of band. I tried to learn as much as I could during those formative years.” Learning programs like Qbase and utilizing homespun tools, the sound of ORBIT CULTURE began as most bands do: rough-hewn but bursting with ideas.. “I used my sister’s SingStar microphone!” the frontman laughs.

By the release of 2018’s Redfog, ORBIT CULTURE’s sound and lineup (rounded out by guitarist Richard Hansson, bassist Fredrik Lennartsson and drummer Christopher Wallerstedt) solidified. “That’s when it went from a laptop project to an actual band,” Niklas notes. “But, up until 2021, we hadn’t done more than 10 or 15 shows!” A first European tour with Rivers of Nihil and Black Crown Initiate set the stage for ORBIT CULTURE to emerge a powerful live proposition that was furthered by tours with Swedish heroes In Flames and Avatar. “As Bjorn from In Flames told me, ‘You can rehearse songs in the rehearsal space, but the real rehearsal is playing live,’” says Niklas.

ORBIT CULTURE’S DIY ethos also extends to ORBIT CULTURE’s visuals. The band is intimately ensconced in every aspect of their output – down to shooting and directing most of their striking video clips. “We thought some of the video people couldn’t match the vision we have,” Karlsson reasons. “So, we bought a camera ourselves and rather than renting stages or props, we shot a lot in the woods, with the woods being mysterious where we live, it was the perfect backdrop for our band.” Down to the band’s utterly disturbing dark-on-dark artwork, ORBIT CULTURE’s vision is nothing short of uncompromising. Down to Death Above Life’s H.R. Giger-esque cover painting by Slovakian artist Miroslav Pecho, Karlsson & Co’s Karlsson & Co’s eldritch imagery is coming into sharper focus.

Karlsson also credits his love for soundtracks and cinematic soundscapes for fleshing out ORBIT CULTURE’s sound and vision. Composers including Hans Zimmer (Dune, Interstellar) and Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings) have become a huge influence on the band. “So much more than any metal being written today,” Niklas states. “Every one of us would rather listen to the Inception soundtrack. It’s timeless. When I get stuck writing, those tools and inspiration are there, whether it’s cellos or pianos which adds texture. We write very easy riffs and structures, so turning to someone like Hans Zimmer leads us to taking the ending of a songs like ‘Inferna’ and making the final chorus bigger and more cinematic. Out dream is to do an ORBIT CULTURE orchestral record, our version of [Metalllica’s] S&M!”

Writing sessions commenced for Death Above Life once the band returned home from their exhaustive world tour in 2023. Karlsson decamped to his home studio to begin the writing process. He freely admits that they got more than their fair share of inspiration on the road. Their arena run with Slipknot in early 2024 opened the band’s eyes to bigger possibilities. “If we never did the Slipknot shows, for instance,” says Niklas. “I would never have written a song like ‘Bloodhound’ on the new album. Just watching them every night, there was an intensity and furious rage that we got to see closely, firsthand, pushed us”. However, a track like “Inside the Waves” shows that ORBIT CULTURE isn’t afraid to flex their songwriting into new arenas. “For me, that was going into a Linkin Park phase,” Karlsson freely admits. “I wanted to write something that was easy and singalong friendly. Of course, it’s not written for the masses, because if I tried to do that, I would fail miserably!”

Produced by the band and mixed by Buster Odeholm (Humanity’s Last Breath, Thrown), Death Above Life is a statement for metal: its present and future. It’s also a crucial next step for ORBIT CULTURE as they continue to define themselves and metal, as a whole. “We play metal,” says Karlsson. “We have influences of Djent, influences of metalcore, melodic death metal. We stay true to ourselves, and I think people are hungry for that.”

The Native Howl is an American band from Leonard, MI. Their 2016 release of "Thrash Grass" unleashed the newly-coined genre of the same name, combining the aggressiveness and intensity of thrash metal with the melodicism and precision of bluegrass. 

The band has toured 45 of the 50 U.S. States, as well as Canadian dates. Among the highlights were the Rock Legends Cruise with Roger Daltry, Kansas, Buddy Guy, and more; as well as closing FloydFest, and performing The National Anthem before The Chicago Bulls' game at United Center in Chicago.